Wednesday, May 12, 2010

While Phish has yet to play a single note of summer tour, rumors are already circulating about what they may do come fall. And right now, the whispers are all talking about a three-night return to Las Vegas during the second week of October. If this happens, Phish would return to face the city that has come to symbolize the beginning of their demise in 2004. But at the same time end, Phish in Vegas is a tradition like none other. There’s nothing quite like spilling out of Thomas and Mack, wide-eyed onto the strip, as the night has just begun. An annual rite from ‘96 moving forward, Sin City hosted many memorable Phish shows, and if the whispers are correct, three more are coming down the road.

Last summer, I brought my toddler to SPAC for his first Phish show. I had visited PT to ask for some advice, and wound up with 150 people telling me that bringing my son to a show was a terrible idea and you can imagine all of the insulting comments made on top of that. Yet, there were one or two people who offered some reasonable advice. So, in case there are any new parents reading HT, here’s my survival guide for Phishing with kids keeping in mind that this is based on my own personal experience with a 1 1/2 year old. This summer we’ll be bringing him and his little brother to CMAC.

Last October, I interviewed Phish singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio about the Rolling Stones' 1972 double album Exile on Main Street. His band was about to attempt something even the Stones had never done: On Halloween, the second night of Phish's long-weekend party Festival 8 in Indio, California, they performed all four sides of Exile in sequence. I spoke to Anastasio at length for an essay I wrote in the free Playbill the group published for fans at the show. The mushrooming hoopla over the May 18th reissue of Exile — with previously unreleased recordings from the sessions — seemed like a good reason to retrieve some outtakes from our conversation, in which the guitarist went deep on his lifelong love for the album — and the surprises he found there as he learned to play the whole thing.